Vaquero from Vaquero by Berkley

The second LP from Portland songwriter Berkley (born Andy Jones) found its title in a song that captures a snapshot of the past and a grim forecast for the song’s protagonist. “Vaquero” centers a Mexican cattle tender glimpsing a white rider on the horizon who would end our hero’s life and steal his future. It’s as much a moment from America’s oppressive and racist expansion westward as it is a personal reflection for Jones.

“I’m half Mexican and half white,” the artist explains. “As I get older I see how that has shaped my life and brought complexities to how I see the world. I’m a product of ancestors on both sides of the colonization of where I’m from.” (Jones was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado.)

The song doesn't stake a moral high ground on what has transpired since Manifest Destiny and the Mexican Revolution. But its chorus suggests some deeper meaning than Jones’s diverse ancestry: it pulls language and imagery from Jones’s Mexican roots in honor of his grandfather.

If you see my eyes have been crying
I’ve been thinking of all that is fleeting
I’ve been thinking of all that I am
And of all that I could have been

“The mariachi music my grandparents exposed me to has such personal, direct expressions and descriptions,” Jones remembers. “In the chorus of ‘Vaquero’ it felt appropriate to zoom in and hear the vaquero’s lament, his unfulfilled wishes full of unapologetic drama. He knows it’s the end. The images of crying eyes come from huapangos and some rancheras specifically.”

Musically, the woodgrain textures from songwriter Sam Weber (Madison Cunningham) on guitar/piano, first-call session drummer Micah Hummel (Anna Tivel), LA/Portland jack of all music Tejas Leier Heyden, and the producer’s producer Gus Berry (Love Dean, Still Woozy) drift from jaunty to Jones’s intimate solo fingerpicked guitar, inspired by the pathos of Mexican folk music. Even the melody of the first notes sung reflect the cadence and intervals of mariachi fanfares. The track may be best remembered, though, by its flint-and-steel instrumental hook.

If the vaquero and “stranger on the range” of the song’s cast of characters are Jones’s biracial halves, he’s left room for his whiteness in the song’s arrangement. A heavy pedal steel presence reminds us we’re in the American west now. And, in its essence, “Vaquero” is structured as a pop song in the American tradition.

Tradition is maybe the best word to describe what “Vaquero” is about and why it casts a long shadow on the album that bears its name. In it are the definitions of Jones this time around as someone encountering himself and his history. Here too is new ground for the artist to explore: heirloom mariachi and American country music that was born of the Mexican folk tradition.

With a voice that straddles delicacy and huskiness, Portland songwriter Berkley (born Andy Jones) takes the mantle from the 70s Laurel Canyon scene.

Jones’s signature progressive flourishes and expansive influences keep him out of the heritage revivalism pack as he ventures into new (for him) territory of country-tinged, folk-leaning tunes on his second LP Vaquero.

alwaysberkley.com